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Inside System Storage -- by Tony Pearson

Tony Pearson is a Master Inventor and Senior IT Specialist for the IBM System Storage product line at the
IBM Executive Briefing Center in Tucson Arizona, and featured contributor
to IBM's developerWorks. In 2011, Tony celebrated his 25th year anniversary with IBM Storage on the same day as the IBM's Centennial. He is
author of the Inside System Storage series of books. This blog is for the open exchange of ideas relating to storage and storage networking hardware, software and services. You can also follow him on Twitter @az990tony.
(Short URL for this blog: ibm.co/Pearson
)

I am back safely from my travels to New Zealand and Australia, and would like to wish everyone today a Happy [Earth Day]!

The Tucson area has been continuously-inhabited by people for the past 3,500 years. One of the great challenges for this arid desert region is water. Recently, Tucson was selected for a [2013 IBM Smarter Cities Challenge] grant. Here is an excerpt from a blog post by Tucson Mayor Jonathan Rothschild titled [Ensuring Tucson's Water Future]:

"One critical area for cost-effective investment is technology. We are converting all of our customer water meters to digital in order to reduce the amount of labor required to manually read all the 225,000 customer meters each month. And we are replacing our Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) system in order to improve our ability to control and manage our water distribution system.

I was pleased that Tucson was selected for a 2013 IBM Smarter Cities Challenge grant. As a result, a team of senior IBM executives came to Tucson for three weeks to listen to our story, learn about our water system and lend their expertise. They came from North Carolina, Texas, New York, California and Virginia to learn about how one of the most arid American cities is setting the standard for wise water use. The IBM team lived in our community and worked with the Tucson Water Department. They learned a great deal and helped us even more.

The Smarter Cities team's final report delivered exactly what we were looking for. It contained a roadmap with both shorter and longer term recommendations. The report did not recommend additional investments beyond our means, but it did make an effective case for the timing and scheduling of our planned investments – recommendations which will help us achieve better near-term results while we develop sustainable practices for this ongoing project. The four areas of improvement detailed in the roadmap were:

It's clear that IBM has made a strategic decision to focus on the opportunities and challenges facing cities around the world through its Smarter Cities program. They understand that a city is a 'system of systems,' and that comprehensive analyses of the ways these systems interact with one another and with the populations they serve are critical to improving the quality of life of citizens everywhere. IBM's selection of Tucson as a global smarter city has given us the chance to demonstrate that we have some of the highest standards for resource management, conservation, financial planning and community engagement for municipal water departments anywhere in the United States."

While this is certainly good for the environment, IBM's focus on helping the Earth become a smarter planet has been good for its bottom line as well. According to the latest 1Q 2013 financial results, IBM revenues related to Smarter Planet initiatives, including the Smarter Cities campaign, have increased 25 percent year-to-year.

Wrapping up my week teaching Top Gun class in Sydney, Australia, I could not resist taking a photo of the cityscape.

Sydney is a beautiful city, and the view from the 13th floor of the IBM Centre at St. Leonards in North Sydney is always worth a picture!

Vic, Scott and I all have engineering backgrounds, so it is easy for us to drop down into the technical weeds in discussing each product and solution. However, the student feedback from both Auckland and Sydney was that some of our material was just too technical.

Do they plan to store and process their data in house? IBM's [focus on Cloud is paying off], and IBM SmartCloud offerings might make a lot of sense for many clients.

Do they plan to centralize their IT? Some companies centralize all of their IT, and others distribute the decision-making to departments, remote office and branch office locations. For the latter, use the ROBO approach to selling.

Do they prefer one-stop shopping? In my now infamous post [Supermarkets and Specialty Shops], I mentioned research that found our clients fall into two camps. Those that favor one-stop shopping from IBM, HP, Cisco, Dell or Oracle, versus those that prefer to buy from the many IT equivalent of butchers, bakers and candlestick makers like EMC, HDS, or NetApp. For those clients that fall in the latter camp, focus on IBM's best-of-breed products.

IT Supermarket competition? The final group are clients that prefer one-stop shopping, but have not yet made up their mind between IBM versus the [IBM wannabees]. Focus on IBM's synergy between storage, servers, software, switches and services.

Last week, we celebrated Joe's birthday in Auckland. This week, it was Vic's turn, so we went to the Garfish restaurant at Manly beach. Here we are with bacon-enhanced oysters.

The four-day class finished Thursday afternoon, and I went out with some of the students to celebrate their graduation. I started with beers at the Cabana, then wine at [the Ivy Room], and finally dinner at Uccello on the rooftop [Pool Club]. Dinner was awesome: pork sausage-stuffed olives to start, roasted chicken with polenta, and finally a capuccino to finish the meal.

I would have never found these places on my own, and the students provided me some interesting feedback about the class and how to improve it.

We arrived at 4:15pm to discover they weren't open for dinner until 5:30pm. We managed to find some beverages at the bar next door. Corona beer?!?! I just travelled thousands of miles across the Pacific Ocean to be offered Mexican beer I can get locally in Tucson? I don't think so! Instead, we got some local Tasmanian brew.

Once seated, our table at Doyles was outdoors on the patio, with stunning views of the sunset. The weather was just right, cool and crisp sea air, but not windy.

I tried their Sydney Sangria which combines red wine, fruit juices and ginger beer. This had an interesting kick. If you have never tried Ginger beer, I highly recommend it! For dinner, I had the Flathead fish and chips. All of the fish at Doyles is locally sourced.

We got done with dinner just in time to catch the last ferry boat at 6:55pm! We literally were the last three to get on the boat before they pulled up the gangplank!

On Monday night, after the first day of class, our friends at [Brocade] invited us to a Pizza-and-Beer reception at the [Cabana Bar and Lounge], similar to the Brocade reception at Sale Street Bar last week in Auckland. Here I am with Katie, one of the Brocade employees hosting the event.

While at the reception, we had a terrible rain storm. I am so glad we were not on the street at that time. Some of our colleagues were not so lucky, and arrived soaking wet!

Special thanks to Tim Lees, the Brocade partner manager to IBM in ANZ, for hosting these receptions in both Auckland and Sydney!

On Tuesday, I once again presented the [Storwize family, DS3500 and DCS3700 disk systems]. Based on student feedback from last week's Auckland class, we took out some of the more technical details of each product, and added more information on the business value of each feature.

Continuing my week in Auckland, New Zealand, I presented my last three topics for the week.

Selling IBM System Storage against competition - Part 1. You would think that since IBM's storage products are, in general, easier to use, faster, at a lower cost of ownership than the offerings from our competitors, there would not need to be a presentation like this. Since there are so many reasons why IBM is better, I split the session into two parts.

Selling IBM System Storage against competition - Part 2. With so much material, I needed to provide some structure. In the past, some Top Gun instructors organized by category, Enterprise Class, Midrange, and Entry level. I chose, instead, to organize by the different competitors themselves.

Selling IBM PureSystems. IBM PureSystems feature the Storwize V7000 and Flex System V7000 disk systems inside, and support all of IBM's disk and tape offerings outside the frame. I covered Flex Systems, PureFlex, PureApplication and PureData, including the newly announced PureData System for Hadoop.

We often joke that I.B.M. stands for "Information Between Meals"! Here we are at a restaurant in the [Britomart] area. I am on [the Paleo diet], which is low-carb, high-protein, dairy-free and gluten-free, and am trying to stick with it even when on the road traveling. Sometimes it can be challenging. Tonight, I opted for a light dinner, just roasted vegetables and grape-flavored beverage.

The folks in New Zealand love sheep. There are nine sheep for every person in this country. Here are some metal sculpture lawn ornaments.

Hyein and I needed new "desktop wallpaper" photos for our laptops. For those who want to dress up their laptops, here's one for each of us. (Click on each photo to see full size). Hyein kept getting her hair in the way. I didn't have that problem, but was worried my cap would fly off my head. This cap was a gift from my clients at [James Cook University in Brisbane, Australia].

In Top Gun classes, the top students are given "Top Gun" caps and their picture is published on the official website for all to see their success. Overall, the entire class did very well, and these three outstanding students had the top scores.

(A special shout-out to Shannon at [In The Raw] sushi restaurant, and my new friends I met at the rooftop of [the Mayo]!)

Last week I was in Auckland, New Zealand teaching Top Gun class. Top Gun teaches IBM Business Partners and sales reps how to sell our products, services, and solutions. I have been teaching Top Gun classes around the world since 1998.

(Why didn't I post sooner? Because IBM's developerWorks was getting an exciting upgrade to IBM Connections 4.0, and bloggers like me have to wait for the conversion to complete!)

While many of my trips in the USA involve traveling alone, that is not the case for Top Gun classes. Our class manager, Joe Ebidia, brought his wife Karen. Our class administrator is Hyein (Hyein is a Korean name that rhymes with rain). In addition to some local instructors, I am joined by my IBM USA colleagues Scott McPeek (Tivoli Storage) and Vic Peltz (Disk/Replication/Competitive Sales).

The rest of the teach team arrived a day or two early to adjust to jet lag. I, on the other hand, got off the plane Monday at 6am, and had a business meeting that same morning with GTS architects from Wellington.

Clockwise from left: Karen is vegetarian, and had some pasta with tomato sauce. Hyein had a lamb burger. Joe had flounder. I had salmon risotto. Yum!

(To those asking why I have only the bellies of Karen and Joe in the picture, I was focused on taking picture of the food.)

After setting up the classroom, we took a ferry over to [Devonport], a charming seaside village just minutes across the bay from Auckland. The ferry boats were close the the Central Business District our [Stamford Plaza hotel] was in, and they run every 30 minutes.

The four of us walked up to the top of Mt. Victoria to see the views of the city. I highly recommend this! Once you get to Devonport, you can walk along the streets to see all the cute shops, or enjoy the parks and natural beauty. I had [done this before], but it is always worth doing again!

The class is four days long. I had six presentations. Here were the first three:

Selling IBM Storwize V7000 and V7000 Unified. Scott McPeek had already covered SAN Volume Controller (SVC), so it was easy to explain the Storwize V7000. For the V7000 Unified, I went into more detail of the file-based protocols and features, paving the way for Vic's "Selling SONAS" later in the week.

Selling IBM Storwize V3700. Having covered the SVC and Storwize V7000, my presentation on the Storwize V3700 focuses more on the positioning of when to sell which product for particular workloads.

Understanding IBM's Big Four Initiatives. This was an interesting request. I was asked to cover Social, Mobile, Analytics and Cloud (what we internally call SMAC) from a storage perspective. Social included Social Media, Social Networking and Social Business. Mobile focused on IBM's Mobile First campaign. Analytics included big data, Hadoop, and our various solutions for performing analytics. Cloud included IBM's Cloud Computing Reference Architecture (CCRA), IBM SmartCloud Enterprise storage, our Backup and Archive clouds, and the new SmartCloud Storage portfolio.